Part 2
And here, at last, he has combined the inner and outer pressures of which I spoke at the beginning. While it is true that Petrograd strikes the persistent keynote of The Secret City, while he sees monsters stirring and records dreams woven into the texture of actuality, these are projections of the deep significance of Lawrence and Markovitch; signs and visions are unnecessary with their complete expression of the states of the spirit. Lawrence, the Englishman, slow, fixed in honor and duty, romantically pure, and the Russian, worn by doubt, forever lost in the waste between performance and idea, oppose, perhaps, in little, their countries. Certainly they illustrate Mr. Walpole's own questioning and offer facts, entirely convincing, for the support of his intricate structures.
Semyonov, who, under almost any other hand, would have degenerated into a mere villain, is presented with Mr. Walpole's passion for entire understanding, that comprehension which banishes contempt. Vastly intricate, a character seen on a hundred sides, he still remains intelligible, consistent; a consistency which permits him to take naturally his place in a story at once involved and simple. He is, above everything, a spoiled soul; the unhappiest possible example of the oil of heaven arbitrarily imposed on the water of earth. His is the agony of the animal confronted with the mysteries of the spirit; and the ruin which emanates from his torment and skeptical detachment is the result as much of his superiority as of his fault.
It is, more than anything else, the fusion in The Secret City that, at the time of its publication, made it the most notable of Mr. Walpole's novels. As a story it is enthralling, the mere progress of the action is irresistible; the atmosphere, the envelopment of color, is without a rent, a somber veil like a heavy mist subduing the flashes of red at the horizon, muffling the sounds and glints of passion, absorbing the shouted ambitions of men. That it is not Russia, but himself, Mr. Walpole has been very careful to point out; it is simply the land of magic to which he has been always drawn, and which, conceivably, having explored, he'll leave, returning to England.
V
As a whole, Hugh Walpole's novels maintain an impressive unity of expression; they are the distinguished presentation of a distinguished mind. Singly, and in a group, they hold possibilities of infinite development. This, it seems to me, is most clearly marked in their superiority to the cheap materialism that has been the insistent note of the prevailing optimistic fiction. There is a great deal of happiness in Mr. Walpole's pages, but it isn't founded on surface vulgarities of appetite; the drama of his books is not sapped by the automatic security of invulnerable heroics. Accidents happen, tragic and humorous, the life of his novels is checked in black and white, often shrouded in grey. The sun moves and stars come out; youth grows old; charm fades; girls may or may not be pretty; his old women--
But there he is inimitable, the old gentlewomen, or caretakers, dry and twisted, brittle and sharp, the repositories of emotion--vanities and malice and self-seeking--like echoes of the past, or fat and loquacious with alcoholic sentimentality, are wonderfully ingratiating. They gather like shadows, ghosts, about the feet of the young, and provide Mr. Walpole with one of his main resources--the restless turning away of the young from the conventions, the prejudices and inhibitions, of yesterday. He is singularly intent upon the injustice of locking age about the wrists of youth; and, with him, youth is very apt to escape, to defy authority set in years ... only to become, in time, age itself.
This, of course, is inescapable: the old are the old, and not least among their infirmities is the deadening of their sensibilities, the hardening of their perceptions. But then, as well, the young are the young, and youth is folly, blind revolt, contumacy. Here is perpetual drama and, with it, Mr. Walpole's hatred of brutality is drawn into practically all his pictures of childhood, as, for example, the school in Fortitude.
In all this he recognizes clearly that beauty and ugliness are twisted into the fibre of man, they are man; without one the other must cease--in spite of the contrary legend--to exist. Beauty lies in struggle, in the overcoming of evil; without struggle there is not only no story, there is no fineness; and without evil there can be no good. Victory, certainly, is not unheard of; but it is rare, the result of amazing courage, strength, or amazing luck. To say that anyone, almost, can triumph over life, that temptation is easily cast aside, the devil denied on every hand, is one of the most insidious lies imaginable. It is an error into which Hugh Walpole has never fallen; the progress of his books has been an increasing recognition of the tragic difficulty of any accomplishment whatever; and, as time goes by, such success becomes smaller, more momentary, and more heroic.
The course of the novelist is from the bright surface of life inward to its impenetrable heart, from the striking the easy, the lovely, to the hopelessly hidden mystery of being; and Mr. Walpole is steadily, perhaps unconsciously, entering the profounder darkness. It is a march practically condemned to failure at the start; but, not only unavoidable, it is the only attempt worth consideration. Not a happy fate, God knows, to leave everything that the world, that people, most applaud; there is no possibility of mistake about the latter--the beauty that is truth is not popular in a society which, blind to its transitory and feeble condition, must see itself as the rulers of creation.
Yet this, for its part, is entirely commendable, the illusion necessary to the sustaining of an affair difficult at best. Novels that ring a musical chime of bells, an anodyne for the heart, are always sure of their welcome; they represent an appreciation in the dimension of width; while the reception of The Secret City goes rather in the direction of depth. At the same time there is that strange absence of oppression already noted, a story always enjoyable for its suspense, the play of character on character.
The result of the commingling, in Hugh Walpole, of the seen and the unseen! If he were a conventional materialist the disasters to the flesh would be unrelieved tragedy, his Roderick Seddon, paralyzed for life, would be, to the haphazard mind, unsupportable; but Mr. Walpole manages to put the emphasis on Seddon's spirit, that proves to be above accident. When Markovitch, at the end of his unendurable suffering, kills Semyonov, there is no horror, but only pity.
The novel, of course, is the man; and the emotions of The Secret City are the emotions of Mr. Walpole; it is merely the extension, by an art and a record, of the mind of its creator. The pity of the reader is Mr. Walpole's; wherever his novel goes, wherever it is read, if there is any response it is one touched with dignity and wisdom. There is the validity of the superior accomplishment, the payment for the failure implied in the greater undertaking: the recognition of the insignificant novel is insignificant, it is a part of the life flashing for a moment in the sunlight, dead, forgotten, by evening. But if there is any discoverable solidarity in men, any hope of final escape from intolerable futility, it must be assisted, if ever so little, by the simple honesty, the communication of fortitude, in books founded, at least, on what is changeless, inevitable, to living.
When these qualities form the pleasure of the multitude, as they now do of a minority, the world will be a vastly different and better place. Yet this is not primarily, not at all, I personally feel, Mr. Walpole's concern: he is the carver on the stone, the embellisher on parchment; his art is the sign, the recompense, of civilization. He is the pot of geraniums in the window, the beauty, utility, above utility. Not for nothing do we allow the philosophies, the doctrines, even the humanities, of the past to fall into oblivion; while we preserve any marble fragment of beauty we are so fortunate as to recover.
Mr. Walpole is a part of that great necessity, of the longing, really, for perfection, for perfect beauty. This, too, is the only salvation for ease; the animal, when he is replete, fat, dies; and man, successful in the flesh, degenerates. There only spirit, beauty, animates the clay. Roses, in the end, are more important than cabbages. Here, Hugh Walpole, cultivating the fine flowers of his imagination, setting out his gardens in the waste, is indispensable ... very few have accomplished that.
NOVELS by HUGH WALPOLE
_Description and Comment_
THE SECRET CITY
What is the secret city of the title? Petrograd? Yes, partly. But much more is it the citadel of the Russian proverb which recites: "In each man's heart there is a secret town at whose altars the true prayers are offered!" And so what we have in this book before us is first (and always foremost) the story of several lives. Petrograd itself, with its insane atmosphere on the eve of the Revolution, is painted for us persistently, with many patient and wonderful brush strokes. The Revolution, or the first weeks of it, are narrated for us with an eyewitness's veracity and an eyewitness's incompleteness. But Petrograd and the Revolution ... all that ... are put before us only so far as they enter into the lives of a few people--a family of Russians and three casual Englishmen. Which is as it should be. Petrograds change, revolutions come and go; but the secret city of the human heart is not transformed. Human motives remain. Human passions ebb and flow. Human hopes perish--and are reborn.
The people of Mr. Walpole's novel are completely realized. They are as much alive as if they moved in the flesh before you. The reader may be baffled by them--many a reader will be, though to most readers they will be comprehensible before the closing chapters. But baffling or not, there is no disbelieving in them. Two of the most important--Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov and John Durward, the narrator--are characters in Mr. Walpole's earlier novel, _The Dark Forest_. It is not absolutely necessary that before reading The Secret City you should read _The Dark Forest_, but it is much to be desired that you do so. Otherwise you will be unable to fathom Alexei Petrovitch (the overshadowing character) as adequately as you ought to from his first entrance.
But about the others, the others besides the sinister Alexei Petrovitch. Take poor old Markovitch, for example. It's not easy, of course, to see him as anything but a self-befooled, ridiculous figure until you grasp that he had three ideals to live up to. The first was his wife, Vera; then there were his hopeless inventions; lastly, there was Russia. Came a time when, as young Bohun, one of the Englishmen, put it: "He'd lost Russia, he was losing Vera, and he wasn't very sure about his inventions." At the last he clung to Russia, hopefully. This revolution meant something wonderful for her--and for the whole world!
Take Vera, beautiful and with immortal pride; with a great and candid courage, too. She had her sister, the girlish Nina, she had her husband. What was this tragedy of love that came to her and destroyed everything? Nina, tempestuous, lovable, like a child--why in the name of all that is merciful should _she_ have to suffer? Thank God! there was a happy ending here!
Others--a half dozen or so--that we mustn't speak of singly. Even such minor characters as Uncle Ivan and Baron Wilderling are etched perfectly. We would say a few words about the background.
Mr. Walpole makes Petrograd as memorable a city as does Tolstoy his Moscow, with Napoleon gazing upon its rounded domes. And that is memorable indeed, as any one who ever read _War and Peace_ will certify. An intensely colorful city, lighted by stars and bonfires, exhaling the stink of the swamp and Rasputin's corpse, coldly menaced by the frozen Neva River, a volcano of human destiny with its thick ice melting rapidly from the heat of terrible flames underneath. A city where a great slimy beast seems to appear apocalyptically from the sheeted waters of the canal. A city where always there stands silhouetted against the evening glow the immense figure of a black-bearded peasant, grave, controlled, thoughtful, watching. A city of dream--only the dream is true.
There can be no doubt about it; this is a noteworthy book, a beautifully written book and--what is best of all--a book with a backbone. You may like it or you may not; you will be unable, we believe, to withhold admiration.--From a review in _The New York Sun_.
"Hugh Walpole has proved his right to eminence. _The Secret City_ is a worthy successor to _The Dark Forest_. His art in presentation is consummate. But the trait that stands out in his writings is his humanity."--_Chicago Daily News_.
"This is, we believe, Mr. Walpole's best novel, a finer book even than _The Dark Forest_. Its descriptive passages are many of them superb; we get the sense of the strange and alien forces lying beneath the somewhat Europeanized surface of Petrograd in a truly remarkable way."--_New York Times_.
"It is one of Mr. Walpole's achievements in this book that along with his philosophic study of Russian minds and matters, he maintains a running, throbbing story of the romance-tragedy of the Markovitch home. Its form and style confirm it in a place of great literary distinction. Being the sort of book one desires to keep as well as to read, it sustains the final test of a fictional work."--_New York World_.
"Hugh Walpole has equalled himself at his best and far surpassed himself at his second best. A novel of the rare sort that is meant for the delight of discriminating readers."--_Washington Star_.
"The best recommendation of his novel is its excellent quality as a story: its absorbing interest in character."--_Boston Herald_.
"The story is tensely dramatic in its incidents and situations, its characters are real and interesting.... You cannot merely read this book, for if you mean to keep on you must think and keep on thinking."--_San Francisco Chronicle_.
"Mr. Walpole is a story-teller with something in him besides fine facility, and it is fascinating to consider this excellent example of his work."--_The New Republic_.
"Somehow, by the magic of his words, Mr. Walpole, in his portrayal of a people in the process of evolving, makes his readers understand better what has taken place in Russia than political experts in many an analytical treatise."--_Springfield Union_.
"One of the best sustained, most continuously interesting and dramatic stories Mr. Walpole has written."--_New York Globe_.
"It is his best work as a piece of literature and it is his most important as an ethical, sociological and political study."--_New York Tribune_.
JEREMY
The real beauty, tenderness and gaiety of childhood is an elusive thing--too elusive often to be caught and pressed into words. By some magic of his own Hugh Walpole has made live again in Jeremy the childhood that we all knew and that we turn back to with infinite longing.
With affectionate humorousness, Mr. Walpole tells the story of Jeremy and his two sisters, Helen and Mary Cole, who grow up in Polchester, a quiet English Cathedral town. There is the Jam-pot, who is the nurse; Hamlet, the stray dog; Uncle Samuel, who paints pictures and is altogether "queer"; of course, Mr. and Mrs. Cole, and Aunt Amy.
Mr. Walpole has given his narrative a rare double appeal, for it not only recreates for the adult the illusion of his own happiest youth, but it unfolds for the child-reader a genuine and moving experience with real people and pleasant things. No child will fail to love the birthday in the Cole household, the joyous departure for the sea and the country in the long vacation.
"A story of the most human elements, tender, witty, penetrating in a breath. It is the study of one year in a boy's life.... Mr. Walpole goes straight to the heart of the child for his inspiration, and never strays outside the narrow limits of a child's experience. It is 'the real thing,' wonderfully remembered, and most sympathetically and unaffectedly recorded."--_Daily Telegraph_.
THE DARK FOREST
Out of Russia, where Hugh Walpole had been serving with the Russian Red Cross, came this strange, wonderful, exotic book, containing an inexplicable treasure of beauty,--the glamour of the Russian forest, the scent of blossoming orchards, the wistful heroism of young Russian soldiers. _The Dark Forest_ would be an astonishing performance if only in this--that Walpole has conceived and written a _Russian novel in English_. But there are scenes that are the most vividly realized moments of which Walpole has ever written. Scenes which the _Westminster Gazette_ calls "the equal of the most dramatic passages in English fiction." Mystical, poetical, spiritual, the theme of _The Dark Forest_ is the triumph of the soul over death. One may read in it an allegory of the soul of Russia.
"To say that this book is remarkable is only to lay hold on a convenient word as expressive of at least a part of the sensation the story produces. Here is a book for which many of us have dimly waited; a book that transcends the outer facts and reveals the inner significance of war. _The Dark Forest_ is a love story of unusual beauty, as well as a story of war. Who, having read it, will forget this book; at once awful and beautiful? It must be read, for neither quotation nor description is capable of giving more than a bare hint of the nobleness, the intensity of this work of art so deeply rooted in reality."--_New York Times_.
"Of all the novels that have come out of European battlefields there is probably none of such scope, such penetrating analysis and such completely spiritual quality as Hugh Walpole's _Dark Forest_. It is many novels in one.... It is instinct with the sense of spiritual adventure. It is young, finely emotional, stamped with the consciousness of beauty and infinity, of heroism and horror, love of life and the vision of death."--_Eleanore Kellogg, in The Chicago Evening Post_.
"At last there issues a novel with qualities of greatness and the promise of endurance. Hugh Walpole's _Dark Forest_ should, indeed, as a work of literary art, easily survive the terror and the turmoil."--_New York World_.
"Dostoievsky compressed within a few pages. A remarkable book indeed--beyond doubt the most notable novel inspired by the war."--_New York Tribune_.
"_The Dark Forest_ is the first fine story product of a high order of creative art we have had from the European war."--_Boston Herald_.
"The very spirit of Russia is here. This is unusual. Walpole appears to have become gifted in a few months with the true Russian literary method. Its magic is his."--_Boston Transcript_.
"It is a story of sustained power; tragic import and impress, and careless disregard of western conventions. The rapt mysticism and unselfish devotion of the heroine; the downright, uncompromising materialism of her Russian lovers; the pathetic appeal of Trenchard's loyalty, and the situation finally developed by the heroine's untimely taking off--these, in connection with the continually recurring episodes of grim war, afford large opportunity for originality of treatment and characteristic, forceful dramatism."--_Philadelphia North American_.
"Such a novel needed the war for its background. It needed the war for its origin. It could only have been planned on the battle line. It could be written for and appreciated by only such an audience as has been prepared by the melancholy of catastrophe. War's blood is in it, war's nerves and sinews. It is the very soul, upheaved, bereft, of war. It is the one great romance that has come from a world of armies."--_New York Evening Sun_.
"_The Dark Forest_ is a novel of extraordinary beauty and power.... It is a work of art, unqualifiedly a great book."--_Review of Reviews_.
"Hugh Walpole's _The Dark Forest_ is the best story yet written about the war that we have read."--_New York Globe_.
THE GREEN MIRROR
The title of _The Green Mirror_ is symbolic. In the drawing-room of the London house of the Trenchards, not far from Westminster Abbey, it represented the past and the present of a great and typical English family.
"Above the wide stone fireplace was a large old gold mirror, a mirror that took into its expanse the whole of the room, so that, standing before it, with your back to the door, you could see everything that happened behind you. The mirror was old, and gave to the view that it embraced some comfortable touch, so that everything within it was soft and still and at rest." Henry Trenchard, gazing into it, saw "the reflection of the room, the green walls, the green carpet, the old faded green place, like moss covering dead ground. Soft, dark, damp.... The people, his family, his many, many relations, his world, he thought, were all inside the mirror--all imbedded in that green, soft, silent inclosure. He saw, stretching from one end of England to the other, in all provincial towns, in neat little houses with neat little gardens, in cathedral cities with their sequestered closes, in villages with the deep green lanes leading up to the rectory gardens, in old country places by the sea, all these people happily, peacefully sunk up to their very necks in the green moss.... His own family passed before him. His grandfather, his great-aunt Sarah, his mother and his father, Aunt Aggie and Aunt Betty, Uncle Tim, Millicent, Katherine."
Katherine embodied the spirit of revolt from the tyranny of family. When Philip Mark, a young Englishman, who has spent the greater part of his life in Russia, and whose experiences have made him more Russian than English, comes wooing in tempestuous fashion, she throws off the yoke of her family and chooses for herself. It is when the ties of family are about to be shattered that Henry Trenchard, in a fit of passion, flings a book at Mark, the invader, who has shaken Katherine's faith in the family, and, instead of hitting Mark, demolishes the mirror. "There was a tinkle of falling glass, and instantly the whole room seemed to tumble into pieces, the old walls, the old prints and water colors, the green carpet, the solemn bookcases, the large armchairs--and with the room the house, Westminster, Garth, Glebeshire, Trenchard and Trenchard traditions--all represented now by splinters and fragments of glass."
"_The Green Mirror_, the second in the series of the _Rising City_ series, which was opened by _The Duchess of Wrexe_, is not only quite individual in style but the story is told with a most vivid sense of that which the realists are supposed to lack--form. But there is no sacrifice of truth to it. The psychology of the characters rings true. The reaction of an unimaginative, sober, righteous family to a prospective son-in-law has seldom been better done. The story will add to Mr. Walpole's reputation and will not at all suffer from the fact that it was written before the war, as his overmodest preface might indicate that he fears."--_Chicago Evening Post_.
"Henry James once said of the author that he was 'saturated' with youth, and in this story Walpole idealizes the triumph of the youth of the new generation that breaks the cords that bind it to the old and starts out for itself--a careful, coherent and brilliant study."--_St. Louis Globe-Democrat_.
"This is a splendid study, the love story is charming and altogether the book is an exceptionally good piece of work."--_The New York Tribune_.